First off, I'm happy to be back after a pretty long absence, barring the odd check in on the forums under this here new name. I like to consider myself an SoI OG, having started playing back in Minas Morgul in the early days as a little twink to finally having run my sphere as an RPA in Egthela or however it was spelled.

Well, where to start.. I should mention at the start that these are only my immediate impressions of this alpha project, I've only started playing again as of this last weekend.

The code upgrades look really interesting. The combat descriptions make what used to get kind of boring to me a little more interesting. I like the variety and the added depth to help along with your own emoted rp. The wear-and-tear and personal body odour coding seems pretty neat too, an excellent way for soldier type pc's to roleplay maintaining gear and a pc coin sinkhole that help builds the perfumer economy.

I also like the additional use of material in the object description, like bog-iron buckle or wolf-leather et cetera. The wear-and-tear gets me a little though when it says the item has damage but is beyond repair, or maybe I just dont fully understand it yet.

I have to admit I dislike some of the new mapping style with southeast, northup, and such becoming common exits. I always loved the n s w e u d used previously and sort of lumped the ne nw se sw and stuff with twinky hack and slash stock muds. A minor thing that I'm sure I will get used to, but for the time being it's still very strange and foreign to me. haha.

As with the above mentioned, the new say emote thing is kind of neat, but still a little jarring to me. I'm used to the old say (to ~man) hi whereas now it seems common place to have your emote and say all scrambled up like eggs. Cool. Just different. Something to get used to.

The overall basic concept has merit. I like the two opposing sphere layout. I'm one of those old stalwarts that believes every reincarnation of SoI pales since the Osgiliath/Minas Morgul layout, I just can't help it, but I think this is similar enough to offer the same exciting style of rp with a chance for pv in between the two spheres. However, the one thing that always made Minas Morgul so special to me was its melting pot of Mordorian culture roiling against each other and Osgiliath all at the same time..it still seems a shame that a lot of the old SoI will be lost and all those player developed cultures in the haradrim, corsairs, numenoreans and such abandoned when once they were such a vibrant enthralling part of the adventure. I realize it may not fall into a current vision, canon, but I still think back to those days of the Twisted Eye, Baakath Morgul, Gothraka...Jhorgio, Ratmuk, Dugha, Nazir, Tash, Tharak, et all as the ultimate heydey of online text-based roleplay.

Needless to say, I didn't want to make this an apples to oranges comparison, so I will move along and away from the Minas Morgul "back in my day" talk.

Where's the gorgets bro? heh.. but seriously? I feel naked here...I remember the first time I saw one in game and I was like wtf is a gorget? It seems a little off to not have the old sleeves and gorgets, it was a little bit of extra customization if you will. I assume they were removed to cut down on the amount of crap clinging around in-game? It seems like most of the gear in-game is all the same with every pc rocking some oily coif, gambeson and leggings or perhaps some bog-iron chausses. While it was completely unnecessary, the wild uniqueness of gear to be found and horded in-game is what draws a large number of players into the game.

Chargen is interesting. I like the skills selection format with the player having better control on starting level vs number of skills. The eye colour thing seems a little restrictive...I assume thats for studying through masks or something? It's nice to also seem chargen back in the client than the website as well.

Oh yea, I'll edit this in too. I liked when you typed who it would let you know how many people were in your spheres common places. While at this stage it might not seem necessary it was a cool feature that I'd like to see again.

I'm sure there was a bunch of other stuff I wanted to say, if I remember later I'll edit it in. I mostly wanted to share my initial impressions and see what kind of reaction they garnered.

Wodan wrote:
I have to admit I dislike some of the new mapping style with southeast, northup, and such becoming common exits. I always loved the n s w e u d used previously and sort of lumped the ne nw se sw and stuff with twinky hack and slash stock muds. A minor thing that I'm sure I will get used to, but for the time being it's still very strange and foreign to me. haha.

Can't say I'm a great fan of this either. I like up and down and the variety that brings, but northeast etc.. Nah, really don't like it.

A lot of that stuff mentioned in the OP (new combat, new emote/roleplay tools, new object variable code, chargen changes) derives from the switch in the Engine. SOI3 uses Atonement's OpenRPI Engine, which branched like this:

The SOI2 engine, so far as I know, is no more. I don't know of anyone who has a usable copy of it (Huan/Bristlecone broke it when SOI3 was originally attempted with the aborted Isengard setting).

Some of the features are new to the engine as of SOI3, though, like the non-cardinal direction exits. Those exits aren't fully implemented, so it's difficult to do certain things with them (can't type ne/se/sw/nw as shortcuts, can't use certain commands like watch with them). I'm not a big fan of them, myself, if only because they complicate navigation with non-standardized syntax, which is frustrating when you're trying to flee from something that wants to eat you.

Support should still be there to differentiate between orc sphere and human sphere via the 'who' command, though it depends on how those areas were 'zoned', which I can't speak towards.

I do agree with you that more cultural variety would be a great addition to the game. Hopefully that's something that's more common in Laketown.

Thanks for the post, Wodan. I'll make a few comments, hopefully you'll enjoy them.

Wodan wrote:I have to admit I dislike some of the new mapping style with southeast, northup, and such becoming common exits. I always loved the n s w e u d used previously and sort of lumped the ne nw se sw and stuff with twinky hack and slash stock muds. A minor thing that I'm sure I will get used to, but for the time being it's still very strange and foreign to me. haha.

I agree, and this has been discussed in depth. We are making every effort to limit the number of exits in each room and also concentrate on using the normal directions (n, s, e, w, u, d). There are times though, where the new directions make sense, and a few times where we do have more than 4 exits, hopefully these are few and far between.

The new directions are not going away, but we do try to limit their use and number.

Wodan wrote:As with the above mentioned, the new say emote thing is kind of neat, but still a little jarring to me. I'm used to the old say (to ~man) hi whereas now it seems common place to have your emote and say all scrambled up like eggs. Cool. Just different. Something to get used to.

I'm not a huge fan of the speech in emotes, but many people enjoy it, so it's staying. The one thing I don't like about it is that speech in emotes is ALWAYS considered to be in the COMMON tongue. If you want to be all mysterious and speak in languages that no one knows, you'll have to use the say/tell commands.

Wodan wrote:The overall basic concept has merit. I like the two opposing sphere layout. I'm one of those old stalwarts that believes every reincarnation of SoI pales since the Osgiliath/Minas Morgul layout, ... [snip] ... However, the one thing that always made Minas Morgul so special to me was its melting pot of Mordorian culture roiling against each other and Osgiliath all at the same time..it still seems a shame that a lot of the old SoI will be lost and all those player developed cultures in the haradrim, corsairs, numenoreans and such abandoned when once they were such a vibrant enthralling part of the adventure.

Yep. We're sticking with the two spheres. They will exist as long as I'm around. You're right though, we've left behind a lot of culture, and the orcs are getting the short end of the stick right now. We knew going in that the bulk of our concentration would be on Laketown and it's intricate politics. We could have easily just said 'one sphere', but our thoughts were that it's better to have something for those evil no-do-gooders that love to play orcs than nothing.

There are future plans for Team Evil in the future.

Wodan wrote:Oh yea, I'll edit this in too. I liked when you typed who it would let you know how many people were in your spheres common places. While at this stage it might not seem necessary it was a cool feature that I'd like to see again.

This is another one of those things that's on our list, but not anywhere near the top.

What if I were to say that I could possibly know of a mostly debugged version of traithe's code? >.>

You finish eating a green and brown mushroom. You still feel hungry
eat belly-rot
You feel a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach as the mushrooms hit.
You are hungry.
You are starving!
You finish eating a belly-rot mushroom.
You are starving!

It's nice to see response from not only fellow players but a few words from up top.

It seems like you guys (admins) have a pretty firm plan in place for SoI and I truly respect that, even if it doesn't entirely match my own grand daydream design it seems like something I can certainly carve a niche for myself into...even if it's not a Haradan role.

Already I've got used to the different emotes and room exits, and likely will get used to everything else too. In fact, I've really noticed that those emotes are pretty intricately scripted and well..masterfully done in many cases.

I really like the speech inline with emotes after taking some time to get used to it. It really allows you to play with the pacing and the way that words and actions interconnect in a way that isn't possible with the simply modified say strings.

Songweaver wrote:
The SOI2 engine, so far as I know, is no more. I don't know of anyone who has a usable copy of it (Huan/Bristlecone broke it when SOI3 was originally attempted with the aborted Isengard setting).

Just to say, it's not gone completely. There is at least two people with the SOI2 code before it was broken completely.

The one really useful thing to grab from the old SOI2 engine would be its archery module. It'd take some small adaptation to fit into the current engine, but it'd definitely be better than the OpenRPI's gun-code that's being used currently.